Unfortunately, while my mother is saving a few things like that, she is a
journalist by training, and most of what she has filed away are notes for
books she still insists she's going to write, some of it on topics that are
thirty years out of date (e.g. the upcoming legalization of marijuana,
something she's been planning to write about since at least 1973).

I have in the past picked out things other family had saved that Mom was
going to chuck or leave behind in a move (the owner's manual to her father's
1949 Dodge pickup truck; a tax receipt to his welding shop; the newspapers
her mother saved when World War II ended, when Kennedy was shot, etc.); she
had, but apparently threw away, receipts for payments on the equipment for
that welding shop, made in the depths of the Depression.  She has some
things from her mother's involvement with the very early Unity church
movement that I would think some church historian would love to have, but
Mom's been carting them around for 20+years and three or four moves.

My father, on the other hand, seems to instinctively understand my role as
family historian, and when he finds something among his belongings of
importance, he brings it in to me - his mother's engagement ring, his
father's watches, etc. - Most of this sort of thing are long since
squirreled away in a case that's out of his reach and easily accessible for
me as among the first things I load in my car when preparing to possibly
evacuate for a storm; others are going off with my sister in a few weeks.
And a few probably belong in the Museum of Printing History in Houston - my
grandfather was a Houston-based printer (mostly for Howard Hughes' company
print shop) who, among other things, printed the Armistice order sent out to
American troops ending fighting in WW I.

So I am discriminating; I'm just not universally thrilled at the idea of
having to sort through several hundred odd books and files of no great
personal/family interest.

--
Robert